Scott Walker Doesn't Like Him No Rules

Back in April, Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage its midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, was invited by the Oversight and Government Reform Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives to come to Washington and discuss in detail the management style he'd brought to said subsidiary — specifically, whether or not he was pretty much selling off the state wholesale to his political financiers. Walker told the committee that he would never, ever engage in such seamy activities as using his office to reward his friends and punish his enemies because, golly whiz, what a thing to think about a person.

Alas for Walker, that videotape subsequently emerged, in which he is shown telling his millionnaire backer Diane Hendricks that, using a "divide and conquer" strategy, he is working toward making Wisconsin a "completely red" state as regards union rights and collective bargaining. Now the Democratic members of the committee, who do not accept entirely the notion that you should say one thing to Congress and then another to cute lady sugar-daddy person, would like Walker to clarify his previous remarks. So, it is telling him, essentially, answer me these questions three, 'ere the other side ye see....

Do you dispute that you met with Diane Hendricks, one of your top donors, on January 18, 2011?

Do you dispute that, in response to a question from Ms. Hendricks about whether Wisconsin could become "a completely red state," you responded, "Oh, yeah," and that your "first step" as Governor would be to "deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions" in order to "divide and conquer"?

In light of your answers to these questions, do you now wish to withdraw your sworn testimony before the Committee in which you asserted that you never "had a conversation with respect to your actions in Wisconsin and using them to punish members of the opposition party and their donor base"?

See that last one? That part about "do you know wish to withdraw your sworn testimony"? That's a big 'un right there. That's Congress-ese for "Would you like now to retract any part of the bullshit song you sang to us under oath there, Sparky?" Hard to see where this gets resolved before next Tuesday, and there's enough fudge in Walker's previous testimony to give the Republicans in the committee a chance to build him an alibi, but it's a nice indication that Walker's ingrained contempt for the rules is fully ready to go national, if needs be.

For example, thanks to some good reporting by the Oshkosh Northwestern, we discover that Walker knew right from the moment he took office that what he was planning to do likely would initiate the process for his recall, so he simply never stopped running for governor. This rather belies his claim that his assault on public employees was dictated simply by the state's dire fiscal problems, and it's no great leap to use this as evidence that what he told the Congress about why he did what he did was, at the very least, disingenuous in the extreme.

Whatever Walker might have told Congress, his financial supporters have heard him loud and clear. His campaign has raised an astonishing $5 million in less than a month — something just south of $200,000 a day, if you're keeping score at home — to bring his overall total to $30 million. The Republican Governors Association has chipped in $3.9 million, and it's also become clear that Walker is every bit the national conservative rock star that his outgunned opponent, Tom Barrett, has accused him of being:

Christy Walton, a Walmart heiress active in the school voucher movement, gave Walker $50,000, the report shows. Forbes lists Walton as therichest woman in the world, with a net worth of $25.3 billion. The other donations above the usual limit were: $25,000 from Grant E. Nelson of Prescott, Wis., who heads a large foundation; $25,000 from Richard Uihlein, CEO of Illinois packaging company Uline; $25,000 from Fred Fehsenfeld, chairman of the executive committee for the Heritage Group in Indianapolis; $25,000 from Robert McNair, CEO of the Houston Texans football team; and $20,000 from Gary Reynolds, CEO of GMR Marketing of Delafield.

(Just as an aside, it's understating things just a hair to describe Grant E. Nelson of Prescott as heading "a large foundation." He does, but it's a large and very Christianized political foundation that shares an agenda with Walker. I mean, the Koch brothers "head large foundations", too.)

(And, also, too, Walker has transferred another $100,000 to the legal defense fund that he established to lawyer up against the ongoing John Doe investigation into his conduct when he was Milwaukee County Executive.

Other folks are paying attention, as well. If this really comes down to big money vs. big shoe-leather, it's going to be more of a harbinger of the presidential election than most people already think it is. It's important to get every voter to the polls. Some of them, it's plain, are going to need more helpthan others. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't George Jones famous for having done this same thing?

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